“A man with one theory is lost. He must have several, four, many! " —Bertold Brecht

Twitter, Townies and Wood Waste

5/7/2009
I often hear students and working professionals complain about the “townies,” those people who live and work often within a single local town. Most of “us” have lived, and frequently travel to, various parts of the country and overseas. We are all too aware of the worldwide interconnections and have a deep concern about global warming and working conditions in Asian sweatshops. We are up-to-date on what is happening in Washington, New York, Paris or London but may never have met our next door neighbors. We have vast social networks that span the globe, yet for all our LinkedIn connections, Facebook friends and 140-word twittering, it’s the Townies who actually talk to each other, write letters to the editor of the town newspaper (not the New York Times or Washington Post) and manage to get the City and State Attorney General to do something about Wood Waste, our areas major source of local air and water pollution. Meanwhile the twittering generation can’t even figure out where that bad smell—the one that is giving them a headache—is coming from, let alone organize to do something about it.